EARLY ALPINE HOLIDAY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 16 August 1924, Page 13

EARLY ALPINE HOLIDAY.

THE FLOWERS OF THE MOUNTAINS. (From a Correspondent in London Times.) It was on a day in June that we reached Chamonix. We were told that the snow made it impossible to cross the Col de Balme. We reached the pass as easily as in the late summer. But here came our first disappointment. A mass of cloud lay like a sea beyond the Rhone Valley—and through it the summits and ridges of innumerable mountains peered faint and unidentifiable. A slope of easy snow on the eastern side took us far down the glen to where the path steepens and zig-zags to the Vale of Trient. The Valley air was heavy with the coming storm. Here came our second disappointment. The chief hotel was closed. Lunchless we trudged up the high road to the Fordaz under a fierce sun. Here we turned to skirt the hillside of the Vale of Champex. Just short of the Bovines hut we sat down in the midst of little streams, drank and ate our last crusts. To the north the Dent de Jaman and the Rochers de Nave stood above the haze; to the west the mists collected suddenly into an inky cloud, rose and swooped towards us, and, as we moved, the storm struck us.

Every Alpine traveller knows the difficulty of tracing a line through the surroundings of a large Alp. We found a colourable imitation of a path running in the right direction. We followed it in gathering darkness and drenching rain. When our path went steadily up hill we at last knew it for the wasser-leite that it was. We turned and struggled back towards Bovines. Then came our first miracle. The clouds lifted to show one patch of green on the scarred and seamed hillside. We slid and plunged down to it. Here was the asphodel meadow of our dreams. In the young grass glittered the light blue of the forget-me-not, the the dark of the trumpet gentian and of his tiny brother, the little primula in great patches of pink, purple violas, and every golden flower that blows. Under the driving rain and the lowered, heaven, between the mysterious heights and the dark depths, the effect was magical. And iust there we found our path. ... '

We were now at another Alp hut, this one ruined and deserted. We scattered to search for the path. When we had lost hope, came our second miracle. Up along the hill from the eastward ran a dog, on with a strange air of concentration, as of one who knows what he seeks. He was alone. He disappeared up the track which we descended. Eagerly we rushed to. his trail, and followed it in reverse, down through the wood eastwards, round to m? sou th, past the chalets of Plan de 1 Eau, across the main stream of the Vale of Champex, and up on to the high road.

Ihe road goes up pitilessly, though 1 V Soon, it seeks the dark shelter of the forest, and you see nothing but the trees. Upon them and through them the rain dripped. Once it turned to fury for a few minutes, and we crouched under the eaves of a house, which was open, but had no inhabitants. There were no inhabitants in that land, and no noises but the singing stream and the splashing rain. Suddenly the road began to go downhill. The trees were thinner. We eiiierged on a line of hotels, the habitations of kindly men, set up as a child might take his toy village out of the box and range it nicely in order. From Champex we drove down the steep and winding road to Orsieres, and then up the valley. The road comes out from the narrows above Praz de Fort on to a great meadow. Hero again were all the flowers of the Late spring. But this was the place of hlies, so graceful in their poise, so dazzling in their whiteness that the blues and yellows and purples and greens served only to make a background for them. The ascent from Le Clou was a reproduction in miniature of a real Alpine Col. Far down in the Italian vale the huts of some Alp, difficult to identify in. the drifting cloud, invited us, and urged on by fear of fog we made no halt xintil we had reached the flat ground. The descent was pure joy. The little gullevs were full of snow, too hard for a glissade but soft enough to hold a vigorously stamped heel. Between little steep ridges we ran down until they became too steep and forced us on to snow again. We had attained that . glorious moment which conies once in an Alpine holiday when first limbs and body swing together and you experience the unmixed dehglit of bodily motion, rhythmically, with the marching feet heating to an unsung song: And we were in Italy 3 ai - m the most magnificent of Italian Alpine valleys. All down the hill the great snout of the Pre de Bar glacier gleamed at. us through the mist like the glistening head of a fabulous beast. So we came at long last to Courmayeiir.